Larks & Owls

======================================================

Shakespeare:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

.......................................................................Sonnet #33

*********************************************************************

gps:

OK, Cool, Cool, Bard!

But that rising Sun is blinding every good thing in His Heavens.

He is only one of the thousands of stars you can see with naked eye. If you want to see and enjoy the full variety and glory of the sky you need to be lying on the lawn bench of the IIT KGP Faculty Hostel in 1967 when were no tube lights and gas lamps; and there were all-night power outages.

The millions of mosquitoes and malaria for which Bengal was rightly famous won't let you sleep anyway. So it is splendid time for star-gazing if it is a moonless night and the dust has been swept away by a spell of monsoon rain.

Most city-slick Calcuttans of my generation must have lived 80 years without ever having so much as seen Arcturus, Aldebaran, Antares, Sirius, Betelgeuse, Vega, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Orion, Draco, Ursa (both Major & Minor) or even the Pole Star, outside the dome-y Birla Planetarium set in the vast and sprawling green visual delight simply called Maidan bustling with horses (racing as well as mating) and clanging trams...are they there still?.

What a wasted life!

And slept off those 365 X 80 that is around 30,000 glorious nights sleeping inside their cramped mosquito nets trying in vain to keep off the waiting vampires a hundred times smarter than them.

Even in the Faculty Hostel, we had our chum so addicted to his 24 x 7 mosquito-net that his friends used to say: "ghar ka undhar ghar, uska undhar Professor Ghar".

Mosquitoes are nightwatchmen, like owls. Also fighter planes:

"....The Mosquito was one of the most remarkable planes of World War Two. The Mosquito – in full the De Havilland DH-98 Mosquito – was a twin-engine, two-seat bomber that was modified to serve as a fighter which could operate during the day or at night or as a photoreconnaissance plane. In whatever capacity, the Mosquito proved to be immensely successful – for a ‘wooden’ plane........."

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/mosquito.htm

Whole day they sleep cowering in dark corners and zoooom and vrooom as soon as it is sufficiently dark: the blood-sucking Draculas.

But houseflies are diurnal like larks. When a single housefly flits forlorn in the night we used to call it: Guddi Eega (Poor Blind Fly; because for a blind chap like me there is no difference between night and day....all is haplessly fine).

Here is Browning heaving strong about larks and Gods and Heavens inconsolably:

"The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his Heaven -

All's right with the world!"

But Browning is no sentimental fool. Here he is at his vulgar best later on in the same poem:

"Full complines with gallantry:

Then, owls and bats, cowls and twats,

Monks and nuns, in a cloister’s moods,

Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!"

Ho!, Ho!! Ho!!! (Varun!)

*****************************************************************

"Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy wealthy and dead"

.......Thurber

******************************************************************************

"Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow."

"Rise early. It is the early bird that catches the worm. Don't be fooled by this absurd saw; I once knew a man who tried it. He got up at sunrise and a horse bit him."

"Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms."

...........................................Mark Twain

*****************************************************************************

See how wretched the larks are, troubling us innocent and harmless owlets:

"....In a thicket below us twenty or more white-eyed tits, white-winged bulbuls, and and grey-headed flycatchers, have found a spotted owlet dozing in a leafy bower and are calling to companions to come and see what they have found. They know it is safe to approach and scream into the wise one's very ears, for only when he has young will he occasionally kill in daylight. The owlet on his part knows that no matter how much he is feared and hated by his tormentors, he has nothing to fear from them, and that when they tire of their sport they will leave him to his sleep..............."

....Jim Corbett: Jungle Lore

******************************************************************************

Come, Oh the Pious! and join the Hyderabad Chapter of RSPCO: "Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Owlets"...

and contribute generously...

We accept only Dollars and Euros...in Liquid Cash....


========================================================